Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media, edited by Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki

In the introductory essay to Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media, editors Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki set the stage for their volume on compact cinematics, a term which encompasses a wide array of moving image works and their role in society—a role that is often minimised due to their length and “small screen” methods of display. Rather than agree with dominant understandings that compact cinematics are new, and exist on the border of film and television, the authors argue that such visual displays, now in digital form through platforms, such as Vine and YouTube, predate feature-length films, and can open new avenues of understanding in the realm of spectacle and leisure studies more broadly.